Fwd: Re: zero-marked true partitives

[hartmut at RUC.DK]

Scrive Frans Plank <Frans.Plank at UNI-KONSTANZ.DE>:

| same goes for German:
|
| PSEUDO:	fuenf Kilo/*Kilos Kartoffel
| REAL:		fuenf Kilo/Kilos von den Kartoffeln
|
| Note the obligatory inflectional inertness of the quantifying-unit
| word in the first construction -- which suggests (to me) that the
| "pseudo-partitive" construction is a classifier construction.
| Perhaps David has kept the correspondence some of us once had on this.
|
| I've not checked, but I do believe German grammars mention this sort of
| thing.
|
| Frans
|
|

Wait now, "fünf Kilo Kartoffel"? Would it not have to be "fünf Kilo Kartoffeln"?
And how obligatory is the inflectional inertness? I find "fünf Kilos Kartoffeln"
acceptable.

It is probably not so interesting whether something is obligatory or not but
rather that native speakers can disagree - always sign of an area of grammar
that is in flux, hence somehow 'fishy'.

As to Nigel's Danish examples (I'm not a native speaker, but consider my
intuitions near-native), I found "fem kilo af de kartofler" OK but rather
stiltet. But

100 gram  af løgene
    grams of onion.PL.DEF

haldelen af de  svitsede            løg
half     of the lighty fried.PL.DEF onion.PL

sound perfectly natural in a recipe.

Needless to mention, tea is [-count] in English and its equivalent in most
languages probably as well, while Kartoffel is [+count].

But it is funny (and probably not totally irrelevent for the discussion of
partitives and classifiers) that e.g. Reis is [-count] in German but its Danish
equivalent ris is [+count]. It's the other way 'round with Spaghetti/spaghetti.

Hartmut Haberland

| >
| >Date:         Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:16:54 +0100
| >Reply-To: Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at MANCHESTER.AC.UK>
| >Sender: Discussion List for ALT <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
| >From: Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at MANCHESTER.AC.UK>
| >Subject: Re: zero-marked true partitives
| >Comments: To: Michael Noonan <noonan at CSD.UWM.EDU>
| >To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
| >
| >How about Danish:
| >fem kilo kartofler 'five kilos of potatoes'
| >but
| >fem kilo af de kartofler 'five kilos of those potatoes'
| >(Examples courtesy of my native speaking wife and daughter but see
| >Robin Allan,
| >Philip Holmes & Tom Lundskaer-Nielsen 'Danish. A Comprehensive Grammar',
| >London, Routledge, 1995, para 732 (e) for recognition of the
| >different types of
| >partitive.)
| >In fact in my experience, partitives in pedagogically oriented reference
| >grammars aimed at an English speaking readership such as the above get quite
| a
| >lot of space - see also for example Martin Maiden & Cecilia Robustelli 'A
| >reference grammar of modern Italian', London, Edward Arnold, 2000, pp. 76-9.
| I
| >suspect this is because of the fairly subtle differences in constructions
| with
| >and without the use of the preposition corresponding to 'of' in what is a
| >pretty common type of expression and one where Anglophone learners
| >tend to make
| >mistakes. In other words, the tendency Mickey notes is probably
| characteristic
| >of grammars of a certain kind and not by any means of all grammars.
| >Nigel
| >
| >Quoting Michael Noonan <noonan at csd.uwm.edu>:
| >
| >>A few years ago, Masha Koptjevskaja-Tamm made a useful distinction between
| >>'pseudo-partitives' and 'true partitives'.
| >>
| >>PSEUDO-PARTITIVE
| >>a kilo of tea
| >>
| >>TRUE PARTITIVE
| >>a kilo of that tea
| >>
| >>Pseudo-partitives are units of measure, but true partitives are parts of
| >>things.  Some languages, like English, deal with the two sorts of
| >>partitives the same way; some languages have different means of expressing
| >>the two relationships.
| >>
| >>My question concerns languages that have zero-marked pseudo-partitives, as
| >>in Chantyal:
| >>
| >>dwita kilo cHa
| >>two   kilo tea
| >>'two kilos of tea'
| >>
| >>Zero-marked pseudo-partitives involve simple juxtaposition of the measure
| >>noun and the partitive NP.  In my limited sample, languages that have
| >>zero-marked pseudo-partitives lack a true partitive, expressing the idea
| >>clausally rather than within a noun phrase.  So, instead of a construction
| >>like
| >>
| >>	I want two kilos of that tea.
| >>
| >>one would say something like:
| >>
| >>	That tea [topic], I want two kilos.
| >>
| >>Does anyone have any counterexamples; that is, does anyone know of a
| >>language that has zero-marked pseudo-partitive that also has a true
| >>partitive formed other than clausally?
| >>
| >>Thanks.  Grammars seldom note partitives of either sort, and true
| >>partitives almost never.
| >>
| >>Mickey
| >>
| >>Michael Noonan
| >>Professor of Linguistics
| >>Dept. of English
| >>University of Wisconsin
| >>Milwaukee, WI  53201
| >>USA
| >>
| >>Office:	  414-229-4539
| >>Fax:	  414-229-2643
| >>Messages: 414-229-4511
| >>Webpage:  http://www.uwm.edu/~noonan
| >>
| >
| >
| >
| >--
| >Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA
| >Associate Vice-President for Graduate Education
| >
| >
| >Mailing address:     School of Languages, Linguistics & Cultures
| >                     University of Manchester
| >                     Manchester M13 9PL
| >                     United Kingdom
| >
| >Tel (direct):        +44-(0)-161-275-3194
| >Fax:                 +44-(0)-161-275-3031
|